Survived By is an MMO where dying makes your next character stronger

The free-to-play, permadeath dungeon crawler is coming from Digital Extremes and Human Head Studios later this year.

The award for most descriptors for a game at PAX West might be Survived By: it's a free-to-play indie open world bullet-hell MMO with instanced dungeons... oh, and it's got permadeath to boot. In the video above, Steven talks with producer Ryan Jackson about Survived By, which is being developed and published by Digital Extremes and Human Head Studios.

Death isn't quite the end in this MMO, however. As the title indicates, when you expire you pass something important on to your next of kin. "When they die," Jackson explains, "the things that they've accomplished, the challenges they've completed, those will turn into cards and points that they can then spend to make the next character more powerful."

While you're running around trying not to die, you get automatically grouped with other players who wander close enough to you, and share XP and loot with them. There are micotransactions in this free-to-play MMO, but Jackson says everything you can spend real money on can be earned in-game as well.